Tinkering School Summer Day Camp - San Francisco

Tinkering School Summer Day Camp - San Francisco gives campers real tools to solve real problems as they build with camp staff, work in groups to build projects they design, and tinker with wood and art materials. Depending on the session, campers may build a 25-foot-tall dancing marionette, create a NASA-style space mission with a launch tower, rocket, and mission control, build a human-sized foosball table with suspended campers as the ball kickers, lift themselves into rafters, build cars they can actually steer, or create humongous robots that deliver flowers. Other activities include tool training, exploring the Presidio, playing, working on art projects from charcoal to oil paints in both realism and abstract styles, guided art lessons with personal art exploration, and Live Action Roleplaying (LARP) where campers use padded foam equipment made to look like swords and spears to fight battles, find treasure, and learn magic spells.

• Ages: 5–16 years old
• Schedule: Monday–Friday camp days, with 2026 summer sessions running from June 22 to July 31
• Price: Tuition ranges from $750 to $850 per week, with aftercare at $130 per week and a $25 multi-week discount for the 2nd and additional weeks

Tinkering School Summer Day Camp - San Francisco includes different program tracks: Young Tinkerers for campers 5.5 to 8 years old, Tinkerers for campers 8 to 16 years old with different age groups attending each week, Wild Arts for artists leaving kindergarten to 16 years old, and LARP for campers 8 to 16 years old. Each session has a unique project theme, and every Tinkering camp session is described as one of a kind, with an immersive, hands-on maker experience. The Wild Arts program offers a mentored environment for both mentor-led and child-led art projects, with a flexible framework that supports campers who want a place to do art as well as those who want to build specific art skills, and it combines guided lessons with time for personal exploration. Financial aid is available, registration uses UltraCamp’s registration system, and waitlists are available for full sessions with additional seats possibly released as staffing is confirmed.

Tinkering School was founded in 2005 by Gever Tulley. It is a project of the Institute for Applied Tinkering, a non-profit organization, and “Tinkering School” is a trademark of Tinkering Unlimited registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office. The program’s stated mission is that Tinkering School believes that kids are more capable than they know, and to prove it, the program gives them real tools to solve real problems, with an emphasis on learning through doing, making mistakes and learning from them, collaborating and making friends, and trying harder than usual.

Last updated March 16, 2026.